


The Saddness Just Sleeps

by atlanticslide



Series: Scarred [2]
Category: Emmerdale
Genre: Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-16
Updated: 2015-10-16
Packaged: 2018-04-26 14:23:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5008108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atlanticslide/pseuds/atlanticslide
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Why’d you try to kill yourself?” he asks before he can think better of it.  Aaron jerks against him, probably in shock at the out-of-nowhere question, but Robert holds onto him, keeps his hand in place at Aaron’s stomach.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Saddness Just Sleeps

They’re dozing; or at least, Robert is dozing, and he’s pretty sure Aaron isn’t totally awake, his breathing long and slow, and it’s soothing, lying here like this pressed up against one another. He feels slow and sluggish and not totally aware, and normally he hates that - being out of control, even a small bit - but right now everything is just quiet and calm and his head feels clear for the first time in months.

He’s rubbing Aaron’s skin unconsciously, up and down his arm, over his chest and across his collarbone. Aaron rumbles something that sounds like “Hmm…” as Robert goes back and forth over him, Aaron unusually receptive to the touch tonight. When they were sleeping together - or fucking, more aptly - a few months ago, Aaron got skittish at times, tensed up when Robert’s hands lingered too long in any one spot, was hesitant to fully relax into an embrace. 

Lots of things have changed this week. 

Robert lets his hand trail down over Aaron’s stomach, still mostly not thinking about what he’s doing until his fingertips catch on the now familiar lines of raised skin streaking Aaron’s abdoman. His fingers stop their walk and he waits for a beat before pressing his whole hand against Aaron’s skin, against the scars, and listens to Aaron inhale deeply, feels him stir. 

Aaron doesn’t say anything, though, doesn’t pull away, so Robert presses himself more closely against him and rubs his nose against the back of Aaron’s head. He rubs up and down the scarred area, trying to map them, commit the feeling of them to memory. Aaron stays placid in his arms, but Robert can’t tell if this is uncomfortable for him.

“Why’d you try to kill yourself?” he asks before he can think better of it. Aaron jerks against him, probably in shock at the out-of-nowhere question, but Robert holds onto him, keeps his hand in place at Aaron’s stomach. 

The inquiry has been at the front of his mind for a while now, since Victoria spilled it, and she’d told him about why, about Aaron’s issues with being gay, but Robert wants to hear about it from the man himself and he hasn’t really had the ability - the right - to ask until now. He knows it happened in the garage; he knows the scars aren’t connected - not exactly - but feeling them, holding Aaron in such a calm moment and feeling evidence of the torment that lies beneath his surface even now, makes him desperate to understand.

Aaron’s fully awake now, Robert can tell without being able to see his face, but he’s quiet and very, very still for a long time. Robert keeps brushing his fingers back and forth over the scars and Aaron rolls his shoulder - maybe a shrug, maybe trying to push Robert away, maybe just trying to get more comfortable. Robert leans down to rest his mouth against the back of Aaron’s shoulder. 

After another moment Aaron sighs and shakes his head, or maybe tries to burrow his head into the pillow, and says, “Loads’a reasons, really.”

“That’s not really an answer,” Robert tells him, and Aaron definitely shrugs this time. Robert pulls back so that Aaron can roll onto his back, and they stare at each other for a few moments before Robert readjusts himself so that he’s leaning on one elbow with his other hand still resting on Aaron’s stomach, fingers aligned with the scars.

There’s a flood of questions in his mind threatening to burst out and he has to look away from Aaron’s gaze, down at his collarbone, his shoulders, his wrists, anywhere but his eyes.

“Were you scared?” he asks, his soft tone unrecognizable even to himself. He’s never quite been able to understand someone taking their own life; facing death in such a way that he’s never needed to in all the times he’s been confronted with it himself. 

Death has always terrified him. The lifelessness in Katie’s body still eats at him, though he’ll never, ever reveal it. He thinks of his mother, trapped in a burning barn with the end creeping towards her as she tried to claw her way out, and he can’t imagine willingly walking into it.

“No,” Aaron replies quietly. Robert looks back up to find Aaron looking back at him, his expression unreadable. “I felt… I felt calm, actually, once I’d decided what I was going to do. I was scared before, and angry, and…” He shrugs again, looks up at the ceiling as he folds his arms behind his head. “Loads of things.”

He pauses and Robert can’t think of how to respond. He watches Aaron searching the ceiling, chewing on the corner of his mouth. 

“When I started the car inside the garage,” Aaron goes on. “It was a relief, more than anything. To know that it’d all be over soon, everything I was afraid of. When I woke up in hospital later, I was disappointed… crushed, really.” 

Sometimes being around Aaron is painful - it hurts being near him and wanting so badly to throw him to the floor and fuck him. Seeing how pained he gets when Robert walks into the pub with Chrissie on his arm hurts. Being close to him and not kissing him sometimes hurts. Watching him punish himself hurts. 

Knowing that he didn’t want to live _hurts_.

He needs to touch Aaron then, needs to feel him warm and alive and here, so Robert shifts to lie on top of him and presses his face against Aaron’s neck, noses at his jaw and then comes around to kiss him, dart his tongue into Aaron’s mouth. Aaron kisses him back, leaning up a bit to deepen it, and drops his arms back down to wrap them around Robert’s back. 

“I’m glad you did,” Robert whispers after a moment, pulling back just enough so that their noses bump when he speaks and he can look into Aaron’s eyes. “I’m glad you’re still here.” The words feel heavy, hard to speak, like maybe he’s saying too much. _I’m glad I met you_ he wants to say too, even though he’s not really sure that he is. This wasn’t supposed to be like this, he wasn’t supposed to actually feel anything for a simple fuck on the side, especially not one so messed up in the head, and he really had meant it all those months ago when he’d told Aaron that he intended to be faithful to his wife. 

He shouldn’t have met Aaron, really, but he did, and there’s so much potential for disaster, especially if he lets himself think past the end of the week when Chrissie comes home. But even so, it’s hard to regret that first time he kissed Aaron, or any of the times since, despite everything. 

Robert kisses him again now, slow and hard and moaning a little from the back of his throat because he can’t help it and he loves the feeling of Aaron’s tongue against his. And he just wants to be closer, needs to be inside him again, and he runs his hands up and down Aaron’s sides and down to push his thighs apart and press himself more fully between them as he tugs on Aaron’s lower lip with his teeth.

There’s not much preamble this time; they’ve been fucking for hours, for days, forever it feels like, and it still doesn’t take much to get him worked up enough that his cock is digging into Aaron’s stomach, but he’s not in a rush to get off this time. He just rolls his hips against Aaron a few times, pulls back enough that he can look down, grab his cock and guide it into Aaron’s ass slow and easy and without even slicking up again because Aaron’s still loose and open and they never washed up after the last time. Robert closes his eyes at the thought and at the feel of him and Aaron hisses as Robert settles inside him. Maybe he should’ve gotten more lube, but Aaron doesn’t say anything, just cranes his head up to catch Robert’s lips again and they kiss and rock together slowly, languidly. 

He doesn’t like to compare them, but there really isn’t anything like being inside Aaron, not even being inside Chrissie. He doesn’t spend too much time on the thought, though, instead letting himself go in the feeling of Aaron’s arms around him and the sound of Aaron grunting and stifling a whine.

“I love you,” he says, feeling soppy and kind of desperate - desperate for Aaron to know, to not ever think… he’d stood on the edge of a cliff months ago, and Robert hadn’t thought he might do anything stupid until he’d glanced up and realized Aaron was gone and for a moment his heart was in his throat with such terror, and he needs Aaron never to be at that ledge again.

“I _love_ you,” he says again, surprised even at himself, his own words and his need to repeat them, to make sure Aaron hears. 

Aaron doesn’t say them back, doesn’t answer at all, just bites his bottom lip and makes a noise in his throat as Robert thrusts in and presses deep, presses so that there’s not a lick of space between them.

So neither of them says anything else for a few moments, they just keep rolling and thrusting against one another, slow and so intense, and Robert presses his face against Aaron’s neck, breathing in Aaron’s skin and sweat and the shampoo he’d borrowed off of Robert earlier. 

“Don’t you ever do that,” he whispers, unable to stop himself and hoping Aaron can’t hear him. “Don’t ever leave,” even though he has no right to ask it.

Robert’s orgasm doesn’t take him by surprise, builds up steadily, but he feels it intensely, feels it up to his chest, his shoulders, everywhere. He tosses his head back and moans loudly, feeling amazing and powerful as he spills into Aaron, like he’s on top of the fucking world, like he’ll never _let_ Aaron do anything so stupid as trying to top himself ever again because Robert can stop him. He really should’ve put on a condom before and he’ll regret this later on because they’ve never gone without before and it’s stupid, but right now in this moment he’s glad Aaron can feel every bit of him, can feel Robert’s come inside of him. 

After a moment of breathing heavily and wiping sweat from his brow, Robert takes Aaron in hand and jacks his cock slowly, just as languid as their fucking had been, pulls out of Aaron’s ass and keeps stroking him even as Aaron winces and shifts against him and he has to shuffle a bit to lie half to the side of Aaron and half on top of him. 

He wants to whisper _come on_ , wants to say all sorts of silly, dirty things to Aaron like, _fuck my fist, babe_ or _be a good boy and come all over yourself_ but he also just wants to watch Aaron fall apart slowly and quietly, his body shaking and hands restlessly moving from Robert’s arms up to his twist in his own hair and down to fist in the sheets and then back to Robert’s shoulders. His blunt nails dig into Robert’s skin as he comes with a shout, his mouth twisted and looking almost pained. 

The bed is filthy. They should get up, get in the bath, rip the sheets from the mattress before the smell of them lingers too heavily.

But Robert just keeps stroking Aaron as the edges of his orgasm fade away, watches Aaron breathe heavily and run his hands over his face and his hair, breathes in that smell and wants it surrounding him. After a moment Aaron pushes his hands away but lets Robert slide on top of him, lay with his weight settled fully on top of Aaron and their heads butted up together on the pillow. Their mouths are close enough that Robert wouldn’t have to go far to kiss him, but he waits for a moment for Aaron to come to him instead. 

They kiss for a long while before Robert shifts over a fraction and they’re left just lying nearly on top of one another with their faces pressed so close that Robert can’t quite see him. It’s an odd angle with his head turned awkwardly, but he doesn’t much care.

“It’d be easier, you know, if I’d never met you.”

Robert expects Aaron to be hurt at that, for his eyes to go wide and angry, for Aaron to push him away, maybe. 

Instead, Aaron just cocks his head back a bit and closes his eyes, sighs heavily and says in a vague mocking of Robert’s tone, “I was about ten, you know, when you first met me.”

Robert considers this, searches back through his memory to when he still lived in the village before - before Chrissie, before his father’s death, before Max King - and comes up with a vague memory from the wedding, Andy and Katie’s first one, of a tiny boy sitting morosely alongside his mum near the bar.

“Hmm,” Robert says noncommittally, hiding his surprise. “I’d forgotten all about that. That’s a bit weird, now that I think about it.” 

“What is?”

“You. You were still just a child back then, I was already a man.”

Aaron snorts at that but doesn’t open his eyes.

“I’m nearly a decade older than you,” Robert continues, feigning worry. “I’m a cradle-robber.”

“Add it to your list of crimes,” Aaron replies without much heat.

Robert watches him for a moment, traces his gaze over the lines of Aaron’s forehead and the shadows under his eyes, and thinks back to that wedding. Most of it was spent too preoccupied with Andy and Katie and anger and disappointment to have paid much notice to an unfamiliar kid there - a Dingle no less, even if not by name; hardly worth his time or attention - but he can remember now the air of discomfort, unhappiness that Aaron had even back then.

“Have you ever been happy?” 

Aaron’s eyes open at that. His brow forms that familiar frown and it makes Robert want to reach up and smooth his thumb across Aaron’s forehead, but he keeps his hands where they are, one squashed between his chest and the bed and the other resting heavily against Aaron’s hip.

“Occasionally, I suppose,” Aaron replies with a shrug. “You really wanna be talkin’ about this right now?”

Robert considers this for a moment, considers Aaron warm and sleepy and pliable next to him, against him, nearly surrounding him.

“S’pose not,” he mumbles just before he leans up to kiss Aaron again.


End file.
